


revelation

by darkmillennium (orphan_account)



Series: two kids and some trauma [2]
Category: Fablehaven Series - Brandon Mull
Genre: Angst, Gen, Kendra Sorenson Is A Good Sister, Nightmares, Sibling Love, seth has NONE of his shit together but can you blame him, warren's mentioned in reference to the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-18 23:03:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22601266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/darkmillennium
Summary: Kendra wonders how her brother managed to hide something like this.Or, Seth's mental stability flew out the window the minute his sleep deprivation finally got to him.(Sequel to: we all fall eventually (except for me, obviously))
Relationships: Kendra Sorenson & Seth Sorenson
Series: two kids and some trauma [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626247
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	revelation

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe it's been nearly a YEAR since i wrote we all fall eventually i am SO sorry i never meant to leave yall hanging like that :/ but anyways enjoy this!!! gotta love the good old trauma card kicking in
> 
> also if you haven't read we all fall eventually this might make sense but it also might NOT make sense so uhhhh have fun ig?

The very instant she woke up, Kendra felt a disturbance in the force.

Well, no. She felt that little nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one that she usually got when she just _knew_ that Seth had been up to no good. 

And sure enough, when she looked over at his bed, there he was, with the evidence in its fullest glory. He was nearly face-down on top of the bed, head right below where his pillow should be; which, coincidentally, was on the floor. Instead of being tucked away under his sheets—which were halfway on the floor, a tangled mess—he was sprawled on top of them, his arms tucked close to his chest as if in some sort of defensive position. But, most importantly, the cherry on top of the whole ice cream sundae, were the shoes on the bottom of his feet, a _clear_ indicator that he had been doing something he shouldn't.

Honestly, she expected better of him. His maturity had only grown since Zzyzx, and it seemed he finally understood the gravity of his past mistakes. Why was he sneaking around in the dark _now_? 

But, then again, _given_ his newfound maturity, maybe he was doing it for a reason. She hadn't seen too much of him for the past few days—perhaps he'd stumbled upon something and was attempting to scope it out before telling any of them. She should put more trust in him. He wasn’t the eleven year old he had been when they first arrived at Fablehaven anymore. 

Huffing out a breath, she swung her feet off the bed and began to make her way to his side of the room to demand an explanation. Just as she stopped at his bedside, arm outstretched to shake him awake, the morning light shining on his face finally caught her attention.

Seth looked _terrible_. His entire face—what she could see of it, anyway—seemed to be creased with exhaustion, and the bags under his eyes were dark enough to stand brightly out against his paler-than-usual features. 

_Maybe he was sick?_ That worried her. Seth was not one to get sick often. Most of the time, it was her bringing home the flu whenever the dreaded season rolled around, with everyone in the family falling ill except Seth, who practically danced around them gloating about how great his immune system was. But when he _did_ get sick, he got hit _hard._ As in, might-need-a- _hospital_ hard. The last time he'd gotten sick had been the summer of his fifth grade year, and Kendra had stifled her worried crying as she eavesdropped on her parents in Seth's room debating on taking him to the emergency room, his fever had been so high. 

Hesitantly, almost afraid of what she might find, she moved her hand from where she had gone to shake him awake and placed it lightly on his forehead. Her shoulders lost some of their tension, but not all of it. He was unusually warm, but not _burning_ like he would be if it were a fever. Then again, this _could_ be an early sign of a fever, so she would probably tell Grandma and Grandpa just in case.

None of this still explained why his _shoes_ were on, though. 

The rule-abider within her warred with the concerned-older-sibling for a few moments, before she sighed and pulled her hand away, reaching over to his legs and worming his shoes off his feet. The fact that he hadn't even stirred while she was doing so only served to increase her concern. She set his shoes down where they belonged and, with one last look at him, made her way downstairs, where she could smell breakfast being made.

* * *

  
As the day went on, she couldn’t quelling the nagging feeling in her stomach that something was wrong. Kendra had brought it up to Grandma that Seth might be sick, but had also mentioned that they should let him sleep, because he really did seem tired. Although Seth was known to sleep in, the fact that he didn’t start blinking awake until three o’clock in the afternoon only made her worry grow. She had busied herself with a day of idly writing stories in one of her spare notebooks, not wanting to stray too far in case her brother woke up.  
  
The shifting of the bed caught her attention, and she looked up to see him slowly getting up, rubbing his eyes with one hand and using the other to rest his weight on. His face wasn’t flushed like it would be with a temperature, and he just seemed more sluggish than anything. She wasn’t sure whether to count that as a win or not.  
  
“Hey.” Kendra tried, watching as Seth nearly jumped out of his skin. Not a good sign, if he was so far off his game.  
  
“Hi. Were you watching me sleep? That’s weird.” His voice was a bit rougher than usual, and the normal light in his eyes seemed dulled, a far cry from the peppy, hyper brother she was used to  
  
She frowned. “I’m trying to make sure you aren’t sick. Are you sick?”  
  
Seth’s brows furrowed in confusion, and perhaps a little bit of worry. As scared as Kendra had been the last time he had gotten sick, she could only imagine what it had felt like for him.  
  
“I don’t...think so?” He said, slowly, a bit unsure. “I don’t _feel_ sick. I’m just really tired. What time is it?”  
  
“It’s around three.”  
  
“ _Three?_ I didn’t think I’d slept _that_ long. That's a new record! Hey, you think I’d wake up faster if I asked Hugo to throw me in the pool?” He stood up, seeming to sway a little before he covered it up by stretching.  
  
“I mean, probably. First things first, though. Why did you have your shoes on? Where did you go?” His face screwed up in confusion again, which didn’t sit right with her. Surely he wouldn’t try to play dumb and lie his way out of this?  
  
Then, she watched as Seth’s face became one of realization, and then he just looked uncomfortable.  
  
“Would you believe that I happened to learn how to tie my shoes in my sleep?” He tried, feebly. He seemed too tired to do any sort of lying, but that apparently didn’t deter him from trying.  
  
“Ha ha. No. I just don’t want you to be doing anything bad again. Can you please not be doing anything bad? I don’t want to have to tell Grandma and Grandpa, not when they’ve just started putting more trust in you.” She didn’t want to ruin that for her brother, but she also didn’t want him to get hurt. _Then again, has telling on him ever gotten anything done before?_

“I’m not doing anything bad,” he said, shaking his head and holding his hands out in front of him in a _please-don’t-shoot_ type of gesture. “I just...couldn’t sleep last night. So I took a...walk. In the yard. I didn’t leave the yard, I promise.”  
  
Well, from the thirteen years of experience she had of living with him, Seth didn’t _seem_ to be lying. He wasn’t lying about staying in the yard, that much she could tell from his earnest tone. However, Kendra got the feeling that her brother wasn’t telling the whole truth.  
  
As long as he was safe, though, and not doing anything ridiculously dangerous, she supposed she could let it slide.  
  
“Alright,” she conceded, feeling a little guilty at how some of the discomfort bled out of her brother’s body. She hadn’t meant to corner him. “But if you start feeling like you _are_ sick, tell someone. You know how serious it can get.”

He nodded and said that he would, but there was something in the way he wouldn’t quite meet her eyes that grabbed hold of her worry and kept it writhing within her.

* * *

  
That night, Kendra stayed awake.  
  
Whenever it felt like she was about to nod off, she dug her nails into the side of her arm. Not hard enough to cause anything but a slight twinge of pain, but enough to remind her that she was staying awake for a reason.  
  
Because she _knew_ her brother, and, knowing her brother, he wouldn’t be “taking a walk outside because he couldn’t sleep” unless it was more than a one-time thing. So she laid still under her covers, counting each and every little bump and scratch and line on the wall next to her in order to pass the time.  
  
She wasn’t sure how many hours had passed. One? Two? Five? It didn’t help that her ability to see perfectly in the dark kept her from noticing how dark it really was, so she couldn’t even take a guess. Her patience was beginning to wear a little thin, and she had just decided that maybe she had been wrong, and it really _had_ just been a one-time thing, when a noise from Seth’s side of the room jolted her into awareness.  
  
Kendra turned over, ready to find out what exactly was leading her brother to go walk around in the middle of the night, only to be met with an unexpected sight.  
  
Seth was crying. He still appeared to be sleeping, but her enhanced vision allowed her to see the prominent tear tracks that made their way down his face. If she looked closely enough, she could see his shaking, too, the way his body trembled against the bed so hard that it was clearly visible from her side of the room.  
  
How had she _missed_ this?  
  
She remembered when the war had been over, how she had often woken in the middle of the night on the verge of a scream from a dream that she couldn’t remember. Whenever that had happened, she had often found her way to Warren to quietly speak about it. Warren was older, more seasoned than her and brother, and, like she had thought, he had _understood._ He had talked her through it, his voice both kind and filled with some sort of hidden rage that he assured her was not aimed at her, but at the people who had essentially forced her into acting as a leader at the age of fifteen. And, eventually, her nightmares had passed, save for the occasional one or two. Just being able to talk to someone who understood, who wouldn’t judge her, had _helped._

But Kendra had not considered that Seth, of all people, would have been struggling with nightmares too.  
  
Because, well, Seth was _Seth._ He was ridiculously brave and excitable and had always, _always_ seemed to bounce back from everything. He acted like it never had any effect on him whatsoever, when, clearly, that wasn’t the case.  
  
Before she knew what she was doing, her feet had moved of their own accord over to her brother’s bed. Exhausted as he was or not, she couldn’t let him continue to suffer from his own mind like this.  
  
“Seth? Seth, wake up. It’s me. C’mon, please?” After a few shakes, his eyes flew open, wild, terrified, searching for an enemy that wasn’t there. He pulled himself into an upright position so fast that their heads would have connected if she hadn’t jerked backwards, breathing heavily and curling in on himself, bringing his knees to his chest so he could hide his head in his arms.  
  
“Seth. Hey. Listen to me. You’re safe, okay? You’re at Fablehaven. It’s just me, remember? Your uncool, nerdy sister?” She was almost afraid to touch him, scared as he seemed, and she noticed with some alarm that the room seemed to be growing just a few degrees colder and a few of the shadows around the room had started contorting violently. Kendra wondered if he even realized what he was doing, if he could even control his shadow charmer powers like this when he was somewhat lucid.  
  
Finally, she gave up and sat on the bed next to him, curling her arms around him like she did when they were children and holding him as tightly as she possibly could. She was beginning to see her own breath come out in puffs in the frosty air. Seth’s trembling was still at an all-time high, shaking so hard that he was shaking _her._  
  
She wasn’t prepared for when he finally seemed to come to some of his senses and threw his own arms around her, cutting off her airflow more than he probably should, but as long as it got him to _calm down_ she didn’t think it mattered.  
  
Kendra just wanted her little brother to be okay.  
  
Perhaps it was his complete and utter exhaustion combined with the obviously horrifying night terror he’d just pulled himself out of, but Seth loosened his grip, pulled back, looked her in the face with such a vulnerable look that she hadn’t seen since they were little and the school bullies had been picking on him, and started full-on _sobbing_.  
  
It was all she could do not to start crying herself. Instead, she pulled him back into her arms and let him cry.  
  
Was this what Warren had felt? This burning emotion in the pit of her stomach? Her brother was _thirteen._ As annoying as he could be sometimes, as much as he normally dug his own grave, he didn’t deserve what had happened to make him like this.  
  
 _She_ had not deserved it either.  
  
Kendra was not normally a resentful person, but right now, it blossomed in her chest like the magically-enhanced flowers of the yard.  
  
For now, though, all she could do was hold Seth as he sobbed with a ferocity that made her heart ache. She didn’t know how long it was, whether it was only two minutes or an hour when Seth’s cries finally began to die down, turning to sniffles instead of sobs. Eventually, he went completely silent, save for the sound of his breathing, which was more even than the ragged gulps of before. She realized that he was asleep again and gently lowered him as best she could back onto his bed, watching his face with tightly-pressed lips. He looked younger, smaller, like the fifth grader that had laid in bed so long ago, the one that had seemed like he was on the verge of death.  
  
She watched him for a long time. When she finally—reluctantly—made her way back to her bed, she did not sleep for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> lemme know what you thought!!! i hope i portrayed kendra well enough and i hope everything wasn't too out-of-character, but, then again, sleep deprivation's one hell of a drug. there's gonna be another story after this one! i'm not mean enough to leave it at that lmao. and yes—there's a reason that seth's pov is written in lowercase and hectic language while kendra's is in uppercase and is more put-together!


End file.
